Well, as the ex-boss of a global payment system challenged by the whole concept of crypto currency, he would say that, you might argue.

However, Harris has a point. The real challenge for an alternative global system of value exchange is not for it to be a wealth creation exercise for the elite, but an effective method of transfer that is stable, cannot be manipulated by institutions or governments, protects the individual, has an intrinsic value and can be used quickly for ordinary, day-to-day transactions.

It should also act as a barrier to crime, particularly money laundering and terrorism financing, and offer a reasonable alternative to expensive wire transfers for the ‘unbanked’.

That is why I have become involved in the programme to promote Kinesis, which has the potential to achieve all of these objectives.

Being hailed by its developers as a “blueprint for the future of money”, Kinesis is a wholly integrated value exchange system linking to a globally accessible crypto currency directly backed 1:1 by hard assets in fully insured gold and silver held in third-party vaults across the world, giving it an intrinsic value. These holdings will be subject to semi-annual third-party holding audits. To put that in perspective, the last full audit of the gold held in Fort Knox took place in 1954. The Kinesis system is ethical because it’s based on LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) bars, and it’s officially recognised via the legacy system, with all associated taxes paid.

In short, Kinesis is an ethical system that enhances money as both a store of value and a medium of exchange.

This is not a gimmick that has suddenly emerged from nowhere, but a system carefully devised over seven years, based on London’s accredited Allocated Bullion Exchange (ABX), the world’s leading electronic institutional exchange for allocated physical precious metals.

Kinesis can never be sold below the current price of gold or silver

“We provide a value and a unit of account and we solve the medium of exchange issue, while the system produces a yield,” says Kinesis CEO Thomas Coughlin.

The only way to bring this currency to the people is to digitize it and allow it to trade in very small amounts.

Kinesis can never be sold below the current price of gold and silver thanks to the direct allocation policy, which gives it stability. Transactions take just 2-3 seconds and are proportionate to what you are buying, so, unlike other crypto currencies, this one can actually be used in day-to-day transactions like buying a cup of coffee.

And when you pay over the currency unit, which can be allocated using your Kinesis debit card, you are also paying over that percentage share of the gold or silver that goes with it, gram for gram. At the same time, transactions costs* are a fraction of alternatives, making the whole system viable for day-to-day use in even small amounts. The Kinesis debit card can also be used to access cash at ATMs.

Another incentive to use the system over others is that all of those involved in it are paid a fractional share of the transaction fees, making it a unique multifaceted yield system. This promotes the growth and use of Kinesis as a medium of exchange while distributing back the wealth to the system’s users, encouraging the rapid movement of money around its network.

What this also means is that for the first time ever precious metals attract yield as physical assets in a way that encourages trade and transactions.

What’s more, Kinesis is Sharia compliant because it makes its yield from transaction fees not interest.

One of the Kinesis currencies’ (1 KAU = 1 gram of gold and 1 KAG = 10 grams of silver) most important features is the security they provide for users.

With unbacked crypto currencies, the title can be held by the exchange and the end user holds a warrant to that title. This is why crypto exchanges get hacked, because they are effectively treasuries.

Likewise, depositing money in a bank in the traditional way effectively means taking on bank risk where you are exposed above the guarantee limit. Kinesis does not expose you in this way because it is backed gram for gram by gold and silver. There is no counter-party risk because the depositor retains title to the gold and silver represented by their deposit. With paper deposits, the bank retains title and issues a warrant of title to the depositor. If the bank fails, the risk is passed on to the paper depositor above the guarantee limit. Remember the Cyprus depositors of 2012-13, who lost access to their funds and took a government-sanctioned ‘haircut’? With Kinesis, that can’t happen.

Other new developments in crypto currency are trying to build in stability by pegging themselves to fiat currencies, but that will leave them exposed to the usual banking risks detailed above.

The fractional cost of transactions also make the Kinesis system far more attractive to the ‘unbanked’, like migrant workers wanting to send funds home to their families in other countries. Currently, they are forced to use services like Western Union, which can charge anywhere between 5% and 25% of the money being transferred in fees, whereas Kinesis fees are limited to 0.45%.*

ABX has already raised the entire call for backing it needs to launch the system (around $250 million) through the issuing of Kinesis Velocity Tokens (KVT). It will continue to sell KVTs up to the limit of 300,000.

How Kinesis Velocity Tokens work

KVT holders are effectively stakeholders in the success of the system and will receive a 20% proportional share of the transaction fees from the Kinesis Monetary System ongoing. The more successful the system, the more money KVT holders stand to make. But what is different this time is that ABX has prevented institutions from muscling in and taking a concentrated position, scooping up huge holdings of KVT, which would risk compromising the system. Instead they have prioritised small investors. Institutions can get involved, but allocations to them have been strictly limited to ensure genuine system independence in the future.

Unlike bitcoin, Kinesis does not use up vast amounts of energy in the ‘mining’ process. The process is a simple one of exchange: you buy it with fiat currency.

Why would countries back you when what you are doing would limit their ability to control currency? Because most governments hate cash as it limits their ability to fight crime like terrorism. Kinesis digitises the system and anyone who wants to participate has to go through a vigorous Know Your Customer (KYC) process, working through Unified Signal, before they can gain access to it. Unified Signal control every cell phone for billing in the US, as well as the medical systems for the US, and provide the digital wallet through which Kinesis operates. This means there is no way of laundering the money through the system. You have to establish credibility before you are allowed to join. It also means that governments who adopt Kinesis will be more empowered to tackle tax evasion and terrorism financing, while generating additional income from transaction fees as a system user. Think how that could transform the fortunes of African countries currently beleaguered by corruption and the wholesale plundering of their assets.

It doesn’t take a genius to see how this could have additional applications in areas such as provenance and international transactions for the art market, another area of great interest to me.

So who has Kinesis convinced so far?

Well, the Indonesian Post Office for one. It has signed up to use Kinesis in the handling of its $12.5 billion of assets. Deutsche Bourse is set to become a liquidity provider to Kinesis too.

With an unblemished track record, which it is vital to retain, there is much at stake for the ABX in the intrinsic reliability and honest robustness of Kinesis.

Credibility and reputation at work

And look at the Kinesis advisory board. Among others, it includes Andrew Maguire, arguably the most important whistle-blower in the history of bullion banking, who in 2010 exposed the manipulation of the precious metals markets to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). He effectively risked his life to do this when, instead, he could have sat back and exploited his knowledge to makes millions but was sickened by the cost in broken lives that the corruption and manipulation of the silver markets led to.

Other members include Padraig Seif, CEO of Finemetal Asia Ltd, and Axel Diegelmann, MD of Trisuna-Lagerhaus AG and co-founder of the Lichtenstein Precious Metals Group). Watch this space for additional names with game-changing reputations to be added to that list.

As confidence in the traditional banking system wanes further and existing crypto currencies continue to give the impression of Wild West gambling dens, trust, reliability and stability have never been more important.

Kinesis has impressed me more than any other proposed value exchange system and shows the best chance I have seen of solving the problems that dog other forms of banking, investment and exchange. That’s why I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

COMMENT: I have serious concerns about the new report published by the University of Portsmouth’s School of Law on the UK’s antique trade in ivory.

The Elephant in the Sale Room, as it is titled, is an exercise in futility. The real ‘Elephant in the Room’ here is the study’s vast shortcomings, rendering any solid conclusions at best misguided, at worst dangerous.

First, let’s take the statistics. There are two measures to consider here: margin of error and confidence in accurate results.

Statistically, to be 95% confident that the answers were an accurate reflection of the whole population – in this case the UK art and antiques market – while allowing for a margin of error of plus or minus 4% in the spread of answers – the standard for such studies – the sample size for a population of 20,000 should be just under 600, or 3% of the population.

The sample size given here – 80 – is approximately 0.4% of the estimated population. Taken as a percentage of the Antiques Trade Gazette readership of 35,000, which I would see as a more accurate reading of the size of the market, that falls to 0.23% of the population, or just 7.5% of the minimum sample size needed to be confident of reasonably accurate results within a reasonable margin of error.

The sample size used in this case leaves a margin of error that allows you to drive two London buses through side by side.

Now add the fact that only around half of the sample actually answered a number of important questions and it gets worse.

For example, question 13 asked: How many of the following goods, either containing or made entirely from ivory, did you sell in 2015? This garnered a total of 39 replies, or 0.19% of the estimated population, rendering the response all but meaningless.

The researchers are struck by the fact that “none of the organisations that we researched had any specific advice on their websites regarding the laws and regulations on the sale of ivory”. The implication of this is that they are complacent or incompetent. However, at this point the report fails to acknowledge that the Government had removed its own advice from the internet because it was so confusing and misleading. If the Government can’t give accurate advice, how are the associations expected to?

The report does finally acknowledge the problem on page 42, where one of the 12 interviews supplementing the survey notes how “confusing” and “unhelpful” DEFRA’s website is on this.

Additional efforts, such as the 2016 CITES panel at the Art Business Conference, and Antiques Trade Gazette’s recent conference, which could have been added as a late footnote, are ignored entirely.

Perhaps most surprising and disturbing was the assumption made on page 25 of the report that the low response rate to the survey pointed to dishonesty among the trade, with dealers being “sometimes secretive regarding [their] commercial activities”, followed by a reference to Stuart Henry’s The Hidden Economy and “illegality” taking place in settings “which (on the surface) seem completely legal and this, in turn, makes participants disinclined to be open about their activities”.

This is staggering in its arrogance and complacency, blaming the failure of this poorly composed exercise on the “dodgy” trade, rather than looking to its own structure, methodology and execution for the true shortcomings.

How is anyone supposed to trust the authors as dispassionate and unbiased in this light?

At least, on the same page, the report goes on to admit: “with such a small sample it is difficult to make strong assumptions about the universe of the antiques trade”. Nevertheless, the report does just that, and unhelpfully too.

Turn to the next page, for instance, and immediately we are told: “The survey results show that some respondents failed to answer all of the survey questions [a huge understatement] suggesting that some questions were maybe too sensitive…”.

Page 32 makes the ‘astonishing’ discovery that auctioneers tend to sell more pieces than dealers, but this is hardly true of just ivory. If even a small-time auctioneer with only a monthly sale of 500 items and a 70% sell-through rate turns over 4200 lots a year, how many dealers could match that?

So does the report meet its three stated objectives?

To evaluate types of ivory objects being sold in the UK, their source and the buyer’s demographic? (A: To a degree, no and no).

To understand how traders appraise an item before sale to satisfy themselves whether or not it complies with the law (A: Partially, although until the conclusion on page 52, the report utterly ignores the crucial matter of the costs and time delay of carbon dating tests – recently estimated in parliament as averaging between £500 and £1000 per item).

To evaluate the effect a total ban on the sale of ivory would have on the British antiques trade (A: Not even close, based on the sample size, response level and demonstrable lack of understanding of key considerations).

The report does make some sound recommendations – not least those to DEFRA – but none that has not already been mooted by the industry without having to resort to the time and expense of this exercise.

It at least acknowledges its own limitations under the first concluding recommendation: “The study highlighted the difficulties in obtaining information from the antiques trade about the nature of their practices regarding the sale of ivory. We would therefore recommend further research…”

Again the trade is blamed, whereas, in my view, the pointlessness of this study as executed is the real cause for complaint. How much did it cost? How could the money have been better spent?

What do the customs figures say?

UK exports of art and antiques fell by 13.6% to £4.95 billion in 2016, while imports declined by 37% to £2.23 billion.

Having just completed my annual analysis of the trade figures, which I compile from from raw customs data, I noted significant drop-offs in values for the first half of 2016, with additional significant falls in fine art imports and exports between July and December.

Sterling declined an average of 5.9% year on year for the first six months of 2016, but the six-month year-on-year average post-referendum fell by 16.3%. So to get a true picture of how the market has changed you have to take this into account.

Although customs returns fell across the board for the last half of 2016, the two areas where this appeared to be significant were in exports and imports of fine art beyond European Union borders – down 24.2% to £1.68 billion and down 55.2% to £524.5m respectively.

Movement within EU borders is assessed differently by HMRC because of the single market, but its figures showed a widening trade gap for fine art, with twice as many works by value heading across the channel from the UK as in the same period for 2015, while the value of works entering the UK from the EU from July to December 2016 fell by more than 60%. However, the figures are comparatively small in the context of the global market.

This year I conducted additional research to see if any Brexit effect could be detected in the second-half figures, but the picture is not clear.

On the basis of what I have seen so far, I would say that the jury is still out. The fine art side shows significant weakening beyond exchange rate issues, but the global art market contracted in 2016 anyway, so you would expect to see cross-border trade decline.

Frieze Week sales boosted confidence

However, Frieze Week sales at the beginning of October underpinned confidence in the UK market, with Christie’s alone netting over £90 million for Post-War and Contemporary Art, including 19 artist auction records.

With an exchange rate of $1.27 to the pound then – compared to around $1.53 at this time in 2015 – this series would have been a very attractive prospect to overseas buyers. It also shows London’s ability to attract great works for sale.

Having said that, fine art imports to the UK for the second half of the year fell by more than 50% in value on the same period in 2015, possibly reflecting not just the weakness in sterling but also the likelihood that this would make London a less attractive place for consignors in the short term.

Nonetheless, all of this needs to be taken in the context of the long-term trend upwards, and we will have to wait to see how the next two years pan out to see if our changing relationship with the European Union will alter the UK’s global market status.

Drilling down to the detail, not much has changed in the structure of the UK’s trading relationships.

The United States remains the most significant partner (see table above), but the figures show significant market shrinkage: the UK’s fine art exports to the US were down by 20% at £1.85 billion, while imports fell 40% to £552.3m. Exports of antiques to the US dropped by 24% to £431.1m, and imports declined by over 30% to £224.5m.

Fine art exports to Hong Kong remain stable amid global decline

The two great entrepots who dominate trade relations with the UK art market after the US, Switzerland and Hong Kong, also saw dramatic change, with fine art exports to and imports from the former down nearly 40% at £584.6m and £507.8m respectively, while fine art imports from Hong Kong crashed by almost three quarters. However, fine exports there remained very stable at £81.3m, showing an overall healthier trade gap for the UK with the former British territory.

One of the most significant changes in trading partnerships came with South Korea, now acknowledged as an increasingly strong buying base: exports of pictures there rose by more than £450% to nearly £90m.

It is important to remember that the trade figures measure the value of goods crossing UK borders rather than actual sales, but they tend to mirror much of the market’s trends and spheres of influence.

The UK faces one of the biggest threats to its democracy right now. It’s time to fight Section 40

Whatever else you are doing at the moment, stop. This is one of the most – if not the most – pressing issue facing us right now, and if we don’t deal with it immediately, it might be too late.

How important? So vital that on December 15, 1791, the Founding Fathers made it part of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Not the Second Amendment, Third, Fourth or Fifth, but the First. It even outranks that US holy of holies, the right to bear arms, which had to make do with the Second Amendment.

What I am referring to here is the freedom of the press. And in the UK it is under imminent and dire threat.

Section 40, as it is referred to, came in as a result of the Leveson Inquiry into press activity and is part of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 that deals with the award of costs in cases where individuals sue publishers for libel, harassment or other complaints linked to news-related material. In short, it orders courts to award costs against publishers, whether or not the claim succeeds, if the publisher has not signed up to be ruled by a Government-approved press regulator.

So, win or lose, every Tom, Dick or Harry with a grievance, however, unjustifiable, will be able to go to court knowing that they will have nothing to pay, because the bill for whatever costs they rack up in the process will be presented to the newspaper, magazine or website in question.

No publisher can afford to continue in business with such a Sword of Damocles hanging over them.

Where some of the problems lie

The Act became law in 2013, but Section 40 cannot be enforced until there is an approved regulator for the media to sign up to. Soon there will be – which is why the threat is imminent – so why doesn’t everyone just sign up and avoid the issue?

The problem is twofold. First, the introduction of a Government-approved regulator to which publishers must, in effect, sign up to by law also effectively gives the Government direct control over the media. Why is this a bad thing? Well if you consider that recent precedents for doing this are in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe and in Turkey under Reccep Tayyip Erdogan, you will begin to get the picture. On January 3, Rachael Jolley, editor of the Index on Censorship magazine, expressed her great fears of this development in the Daily Telegraph.

“There should be a clear distance between any government and the journalists who report on it,” she wrote.

Secondly, the approved regulator in question is IMPRESS, the body set up by Max Mosley, the hugely wealthy former racing driver who has gone after the press, bankrolling the campaign in the process, ever since the News of the World exposed details of an orgy in which he took part in 2008. IMPRESS fields a board of wide-ranging talents, expresses its commitment to press freedom and bills itself as “the first truly independent press regulator in the UK”.

It may be all of these things, but so far no national newspaper has signed up to its rules. Why so little confidence in IMPRESS? Go to their website and click through to IMPRESS Code Consultation for the first clue. This is what it says: “The IMPRESS Code Committee is in the process of drafting a new Standards Code for the press. IMPRESS ran a six week public consultation until 29th September 2016. IMPRESS received over 40 submissions. The Code Committee is considering the draft Code in light of these submissions.”

So, if I understand this correctly, the press must sign up to be ruled by an organisation that has not yet published its binding code of conduct. In other words, they would have no idea what they were signing up to.

Now check what it says under Our Regulatory Scheme on the website: “We have the power to direct the publisher to make a correction or an apology. We also have the power to award financial sanctions (fines) when a publisher has committed serious or systemic breaches of the Code or our governance requirements. We can award sanctions up to 1% of that publication’s turnover, to a maximum of £1m.

“If you believe that you have suffered real harm and you wish to pursue a legal claim for defamation, breach of privacy or harassment against a publisher regulated by IMPRESS, you may ask us to arrange arbitration for you.”

IMPRESS offers no clarity as it adopts sweeping powers

As I read this, then, an organisation that has not yet set out its code of conduct, expects publishers to sign up to that binding code and subject themselves to the whim of anyone who feels that they might have been harassed, without defining what that might be, whilst setting out the powers of enforcement. Don’t forget, the £1m fine would be in addition to the costs, however unjustifiable awarding them against a publisher might be.

Quite frankly, whatever other objections might arise, the lack of clarity across the board here is reason enough to dismiss this scheme out of hand, especially in light of the powers it adopts and the level of potential sanctions.

Section 40 itself is just as woolly. Paragraph 3 (a), for instance, orders that costs must be awarded against the defendant (the press) unless the court is satisfied that (a) “the issues raised by the claim could not have been resolved by using an arbitration scheme…” or (b) “it is just and equitable in all circumstances of the case to make a different award of costs or make no award of costs”.

Sub para (a) is a non starter, because any vexatious claimant would have no incentive to abide by any arbitration, safe in the knowledge that in pursuing an action in court it would be the defendant shouldering their costs regardless of the outcome.

Sub para (b) is so wide and undefined as to be meaningless as reassurance to any publisher hoping to stave off a vexatious claimant’s costs. Quite simply, none would take the risk of publishing in the first place under such circumstances.

The result of all of this? A hamstrung press, which either comes to the heel of those who want to muzzle it, or faces closure because it simply could not afford to continue under such threats and strictures.

Don’t forget, in all of this, that a great deal of other legislation regulates the press already, from the Contempt of Court Act to existing libel laws. When journalists were caught out hacking phones, they went to jail, including Andy Coulson, David Cameron’s former communications director. The law does work already. They won’t be doing that again.

Fighting Section 40 is about defending democratic freedoms

It is vital to understand that freedom of the press is not about protecting dodgy reporters intent on smearing the latest sex scandal across the Sunday tabloids; it is about protecting the very democratic freedoms that you and I have taken for granted as our right for centuries. The Fourth Estate’s most important role is in holding parliament to account and, beyond parliament, in acting as a democratic check and balance that makes the rich, powerful and unscrupulous think twice before acting against the common interest. The press does this by retaining the power to expose wrongdoing and the wrongdoer without fear or favour. Section 40 will remove that check and balance, while introducing fear and favour, and will close the essential democratic divide between the press and Government. It is not in my interests for this to happen, nor is it in yours.

How many times when scandal or tragedy breaks in public life have we heard the words: We must do everything we can to ensure that this never happens again?

MPs expenses; the current football sex abuse scandal; cash-for-questions and many other outrages would never have come to light if Section 40 had applied at the time.

Allow it to proceed and the chances are such horrors will not only happen again, but will continue to do so on a more frequent basis. The real scandal is that, under such circumstances, we, the public, would never get to hear about it. And so the malefactors would know they could act unfettered by the risk of public scrutiny.

As Rachael Jolley says: “If such laws were introduced in another country, British politicians would be speaking out against such shocking media censorship. There’s no doubt that authoritarian powers will use this example to bolster their own cases in imposing media regulation.”

There are peoples across the world fighting for such freedoms, and we are about to give it all up, and oh so casually.

Culture Secretary Karen Bradley needs to remember her responsibility not just to the British public in this, but also to other democracies across the globe; it’s more than a timely reminder for her as one looks out across the West now.

Hacked Off and those supporting Mosley’s stance are extremely well funded and have been making very loud representations to the Government in favour of enforcing Section 40.

You can do your bit to counter this by letting the Government know what you think.

And what the industry can do about it now…

In recent years, global media coverage of multi-million dollar auction prices, combined with the rise of art as an alternative asset class, has focused more attention on the international art market than ever before.

That increase in awareness has brought the issue of transparency to the fore, but what exactly do we mean by it?

To the public – the market’s client base – transparency largely means more clarity about terms and conditions, pricing, and consumer rights when buying and selling.

However, to politicians, interest groups, the media and the many and varied corners of the market itself, concerns over transparency focus on a far wider range of topics: provenance, finance, crime and market manipulation, to name the most obvious. The general attitude seems to be that improved transparency will boost confidence and reduce the risk of things going wrong.

With the trade in antiquities, concern gravitates towards looting and fakes, with money laundering and theft following close behind. With finance around high-end auctions, critics argue that a lack of transparency allows auction houses, dealers and collectors to skew the market to give themselves an unfair competitive advantage or create bubbles to sustain their holdings in artworks that might otherwise decline in value.

For the trade, though, increased transparency can cause problems. Thanks to the internet, it is far easier for potential buyers to find out what a dealer paid for an item, making it much more difficult for them to cover their costs and sell at a decent profit; most people are not interested in the time, effort, expertise, or the restoration, transport or other costs that the dealer has to account for in acquiring the item, as these are not seen as contributing to its value. How justified are concerns, and what should be done?

Focus on the four key variables in any transaction

Let’s deconstruct all of this a little. Every transaction really only has four key variables: the buyer, the seller, the goods, and the money. Each brings its potential to the deal, and its risks. Due diligence on behalf of both buyer and seller can tackle much of that risk, but not all of it. How can you be absolutely sure where the buyer’s money comes from? How robust is the seller’s paperwork? And who exactly are they? Surely the answer is to regulate the art market directly, like the worlds of finance, insurance and the law, so that officialdom can intervene where necessary and public confidence in honest trading does not have to rest on what some view as little more than a person’s word.

The first thing to understand is that hundreds of laws already regulate the market (you can download the list that applies to the UK art market from the British Art Market Federation website), but experience tells us that direct regulation rarely solves the problem.

The establishment of the Conseil des Ventes in France in 2000 to govern the market once France liberalised its auction laws did nothing to prevent the cols rouges scandal at the Drouot auction house nine years later, where the closed shop of portering services masked a criminal network of theft. Nor did the Wine Association’s establishment of a rigorous code of practice in 2003 prevent people from falling victim to rogue funds in the years that followed. Then we have the age-old issue of what exactly art is: if you can’t define something clearly, then you can’t legislate for it effectively.

But more pressing, perhaps, is where questions of art market transparency overlap with debates about public interest and the right to privacy. If politics is to intervene here, then the lawmakers as a whole need a better understanding of how to balance public interest with the practical needs of business. That means consulting trade professionals to a far greater degree than happens now rather than relying on the opinions of academics and others lobbying against art market interests. We also need more consistency on codes of practice across trade associations as well as with legal definitions for cultural property, what constitutes art and other loose terms.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe, the minister guiding the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill through the UK parliament, recently declared that creating such passports would breach Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the right to privacy.

In 2014, in a case involving the auctioneers William J. Jenack, the New York Court of Appeals overturned a New York Supreme Court ruling that an auction contract was null and void if it did not name the seller. The court clearly recognised the damage this would do to auctions and declared that having the auctioneer’s details on the paperwork as the agent of the seller was good enough.

How to use the art of persuasion when it comes to transparency

I have always believed that the most effective way of getting people to change their behaviour is to show them why it is in their interests to do so – and enlightened trade professionals are already demonstrating how and why this should be done.

Online aggregator Barnebys has just published research showing that transparency online at auction, along with ease of bidding and post-sale fulfilment, is the most important factor in building brand trust and improving sell-through rates. ‘The new generation of buyers and sellers expect all information to be easily at their disposal, without any barriers,’ says Barnebys co-founder Pontus Silverstolpe. ‘Withholding information, such as final prices, foments distrust and alienates users.’ Anna-Karin Laurell, CEO of Scandinavian auction house Bukowskis, echoes this sentiment: ‘Transparency and [improved] function increases credibility. Through our new website we have also reached new target markets we previously believed were very hard to reach – the youngest between 18–25.’

Enhanced condition reports for online auctions, accompanied by excellent images, certificates of authenticity and a clear summary of all charges are the building blocks to buyer confidence and brand trust for sellers and their agents. So you may not know exactly who you are buying from, but if the auction site handling the transaction effectively underwrites it with all of the above, then it is a form of transparency that addresses many buyers’ concerns. This reflects the appeal court ruling in the Jenack case.

Having assessed auction websites professionally for nearly 20 years, my first and most important test is how easy it is to find the buyer’s premium rates. If there is any difficulty at all with this, I simply will not buy from that auctioneer, nor recommend them. Newly launched Forum Auctions have made a virtue of publishing exactly what their charges are at the top of their advice page on buying, and they also promote a set of core values, including a pledge on dealing with complaints promptly and fairly. It’s a simple, cost-free and uncomplicated piece of marketing that immediately promotes confidence. It is also a wise move because the Advertising Standards Authority has just launched an investigation into charges at auction, including whether buyer’s premium rates, VAT and other charges should be reflected in auction estimates.

The transparency issue is not going to go away. The market needs to regulate itself better if it is to keep the legislators off its back. It also needs to be better organised and more proactive in developing relationships with government. If the UK industry is serious in this, it needs to increase funding to its lobbying arm, the British Art Market Federation, by a factor of ten. The US would do well to follow suit.

This article first appeared in the October 2016 issue of Apollo, the International Art Magazine

How the Milwaukee Journal reported the protest against the introduction of the buyer’s premium in 1975.

Self-interest among EU member states will prevail in the end, if history is anything to go by

Whatever your views on the big EU vote on June 23, now is the time to deal with its aftermath. Brexit leaders who left the stage almost the moment the fight was over did not do their supporters or anyone else any favours as they failed to provide the direction they had promised.

David Cameron announced his resignation but said he would steady the ship of state until his successor was in place. Having announced this, however, he left it as rudderless as all the others.

Andrea Leadsom let down her supporters by demonstrating instantaneously just how unfit she was to take on the mantle of PM, which fortunately meant that the anticipated summer limbo of the Conservative Party leadership election came to a swift end with the coronation of Theresa May. Like her or not, her appointment means more immediate stability and direction, providing the country with a leader that other European heads of state feel they can negotiate with.

Beyond the politicians, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has not exactly covered himself in glory. Instead of being the voice of calm reassurance, he has consistently talked the economy down. He should know better than most that the best way to create a recession is to talk your way into it.

As I write, Angela Merkel has endorsed May’s decision not to invoke Article 50 until 2017, so as to allow for the groundwork to be done on the way forward. Both Australia and, most importantly, the US have started talks on trade deals, with Secretary of State John Kerry expressing enthusiasm for getting on with the job and telling the world that leaving the UK adrift now would be a bad idea for all. The German industry association has already called for existing trade deals with the UK to be ongoing without hindrance or penalty.

The FTSE 100 – ok not as good a bellwether on Brexit as the 250, but still – has just risen above 6700, and the pound has climbed back to $1.31 as the Bank of England has announced that there is “no clear evidence” to show a sharp Brexit slowdown and warns against a kneejerk interest rate cut, especially as consumer spending, in general, has held up.

Market researchers Gfk, who specialise in measuring consumer confidence, reported a sharp fall immediately following the vote – the sharpest since 1994 – but only to levels at or above historical averages.

Looking beyond the cloud of gloom

Let’s be clear on this: it’s way too early to declare the bumpy ride over, and potholes along the road may be deep and rocky. But with growth forecasts for the UK outperforming the EU by some margin for the year ahead on top of all the other good news mentioned above, maybe we should spend at least some time looking for the silver lining rather than insisting at pointing relentlessly at the cloud.

Legally, the UK and others cannot sign off new trade deals independently while we are still members of the EU, but as John Kerry stated, that doesn’t mean we can’t start negotiations now. What’s more, we can take those negotiations a long way down the road.

As for the desire to punish the UK for its decision to leave the EU, just how far will Eurozone countries go? Some facts we do know.

We know, for instance, that the UK has the fifth largest economy in the world. We also know that in 2015 the UK accounted for 17% of the EU GDP, second only to Germany at 20%. And we also know that the trade gap between the UK and EU stands at around £24bn and is growing to the EU’s advantage.

All of these facts tell us that punishing the UK over trade deals would do more harm to the EU than to the UK.

However, some argue that for sound political reasons the EU must hold firm and punish the UK on tariffs: let the UK off lightly and others may well follow the Brexit route.

This thinking fails to take account of two factors, however: the rest of the world and national interest.

Let’s take the rest of the world first. Taking the view that Brexit is at least partially about gaining freer access to a much bigger market, it is not unreasonable to assume that the UK’s ability to negotiate better trade deals independently with the US and burgeoning Far Eastern economies will lead to some redirection of both exports and imports. Less favourable terms from our EU neighbours are likely to encourage us to increase two-way trade with these other partners, for instance by importing more Japanese cars than German ones.

The net result is that the EU will be the loser. Punishment of the type that has been mooted only works if the UK has no alternative, but here it clearly does.

This means that it will not be that long before the balance of power on EU trade deals shifts towards the UK, which can then demand far more favourable terms than before.

National interest and the buyer’s premium

Now let’s look at the national interest. For all the talk of the EU being a convocation of nation states working towards a federal union, the evidence shows that national interest among members is as strong as ever. One only has to look at what is happening in Italy, with Matteo Renzi’s stand-off against Brussels over injecting state money in to the economy, to show what the EU is up against.

Interestingly, the art market and its reaction to the introduction of the buyer’s premium in 1975 provides one of the best examples of what can happen when trade interests come together to make a principled stand.

Dealers protesting against Sotheby’s and Christie’s decision to introduce the buyer’s premium at Sotheby’s organised selective boycotts of sales. At a pre-arranged signal, they stood up in the saleroom and tore up their catalogues before leaving in protest. However, self-interest paved the way for the BP’s establishment and survival because, as legend has it, so many of these same dealers had quietly ensured that they had placed someone in the room to bid for them after they left.

So it is likely to be with the EU. Technocrats in Brussels may make a lot of noise, and national leaders may announce firm stands for the benefit of media outlets and their electorates, but be sure that behind closed doors they will all be scrabbling to win the best deals with what remains – for now, at least – the EU’s second biggest economy.

Those who say that such jockeying for position among member states on trade is impossible under EU rules should remember which two countries first broke EU fiscal rules: Germany and France. And they have both continued to do so, with France again predicted to break Eurozone budget deficit rules by some margin this year.

Is this a cynical view of the world? Maybe, but I would argue it is also a fairly realistic one. For all the grandstanding, talk of treaties and unbreakable rules, a lot of the talk coming out of Brussels is little more than demagoguery.

The UK may have a limited time left in the EU, but it will always be part of Europe and thank God for that. The British may dislike bullying from Brussels, but when it comes to individual nations and their peoples, I find that we are pretty big fans on the whole and long may that last.

If individual nations states within the EU attempt to put themselves at a competitive advantage over trade with the UK in future, then they will simply be trying to do their best by their electorates.

In the end, that’s just human nature and we would do well to remember it.